BRAHMA CHELLANEY
But what consequences? Two successive U.S. administrations – Barack Obama’s together with straight off Donald Trump’s – stimulate got failed to force dorsum credibly against China’s expansionism inwards the South PRC Sea, which has accelerated despite a 2016 international arbitral court ruling invalidating its territorial claims there. Instead, the U.S. has relied on rhetoric or symbolic actions.
For example, the USA has disinvited PRC from this summer’s 26-country Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise. The motion has been played upward every bit a potential indication that the U.S. may finally hold upward adopting a tougher approach toward China. Mattis himself has called the determination an “initial response” to China’s militarization of the South PRC Sea, which is twice the size of the Gulf of United Mexican States together with 50% bigger than the Mediterranean Sea.
Similarly, the U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation (FON) operations, which are occurring to a greater extent than regularly nether Trump than they did nether Obama, stimulate got been widely hyped. After the most recent operation, inwards which a guided-missile cruiser together with a destroyer sailed past times the disputed Paracel Islands, Mattis declared that the U.S. was the “only country” to stand upward up to China.
But China, too, has used America’s FON operations to play to the Chinese public, claiming subsequently the latest functioning that its navy had “warned together with expelled” ii U.S. warships. More important, neither FON operations nor China’s exclusion from the RIMPAC do addresses the shifts inwards regional dynamics brought most past times China’s island-building together with militarization, non to advert its bullying of its neighbors. As a result, they volition non credibly deter PRC or reassure U.S. allies.
The reality is that China’s incremental encroachments stimulate got collectively changed the facts inwards the South PRC Sea. It has consolidated its command over the strategic corridor betwixt the Indian together with Pacific Oceans, through which one-third of global maritime merchandise – worth $5.3 trillion in conclusion twelvemonth – passes. It is also asserting command over the region’s natural resources, past times bullying together with coercing other claimants seeking to explore for fossil oil together with gas inwards areas that are theirs nether the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Vietnam, for example, has been forced to scrap a projection on its ain continental shelf.
Perhaps most ominous, China’s evolution of forwards operating bases on manmade South PRC Sea islands “appears complete,” every bit Admiral Philip Davidson told a Senate commission inwards Apr earlier taking over the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. “China is straight off capable of controlling the South PRC Sea inwards all scenarios curt of state of war amongst the US,” Davidson confirmed.
Davidson’s characterization is revealing. As PRC takes a long-term strategic approach to strengthening its concord over the South PRC Sea (and, increasingly, beyond), the U.S. is focused exclusively on the prospect of all-out war.
The Pentagon has flaunted its capability to demolish China’s artificial islands, whose creation Chinese President Xi Jinping has cited every bit ane of his key accomplishments. “I would but say you,” articulation staff manager Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie of late said, “the U.S. state of war machine has had a lot of sense inwards the western Pacific taking downwards pocket-size islands.”
If opened upward state of war is China’s only vulnerability inwards the South PRC Sea, the U.S. volition lose the larger strategic competition. While seeking to protect its state of war machine liberty of navigation inwards the South PRC Sea, the U.S. has turned a blind oculus to China’s stealthy but aggressive assault on the liberty of the seas, including restricting the rights of other countries inwards the region.
The only feasible pick is a credible strategy that pushes dorsum against China’s purpose of coercion to advance its territorial together with maritime revisionism. As Admiral Harry Harris cautioned in conclusion calendar month patch departing every bit caput of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, “Without focused involvement together with engagement past times the U.S. together with our allies together with partners, PRC volition realize its dream of hegemony inwards Asia.”
Simply put, PRC is winning the battle for the South PRC Sea without firing a shot – or paying whatever international costs. While Trump is sustaining this trend, it began nether Obama, on whose scout PRC created vii artificial islands together with started militarizing them.
Obama’s quiet inwards 2012 when PRC occupied the disputed Scarborough Shoal – a traditional Philippine angling Earth located inside that country’s exclusive economical zone – emboldened PRC to embark on a broader island-building strategy inwards the South PRC Sea the next year. By the fourth dimension the U.S. realized the range together with scale of China’s land-reclamation program, Russian Federation grabbed its attending past times annexing Crimea. Yet the long-term strategic implications of what PRC has achieved inwards the South PRC Sea are far to a greater extent than serious.
Unfortunately, when it comes to constraining China’s expansionism, Trump seems but every bit clueless every bit his predecessor. Focused obsessively on 3 issues – trade, North Korea, together with Islamic Republic of Iran – Trump has watched quietly every bit PRC builds upward its state of war machine assets through frenzied construction of permanent facilities on newly reclaimed land. And straight off PRC has begun making strategic inroads inwards the Indian Ocean together with the East PRC Sea, threatening the interests of to a greater extent than countries, from Republic of Republic of India to Japan.
The South PRC Sea has been together with volition rest key to the rival for influence inwards the larger Indo-Pacific region. Thanks to U.S. fecklessness, the widely shared vision of a free, open, together with democratic-led Indo-Pacific could give means to an illiberal, repressive regional order, amongst PRC inwards total control.
Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research together with Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy inwards Berlin, is the writer of ix books, including Asian Juggernaut, Water: Asia’s New Battleground, together with Water, Peace, together with War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.
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